Phillips appealed the commission’s decision to uphold an administrative law judge’s ruling against him. He was ordered to retrain himself and his staff to comply with the wishes of same-sex duos and report on his progress to the state.
“In its public deliberations, its members virtually ignored Phillips’s constitution defenses. And at a later hearing on Phillips’s motion to stay its order, one committee member candidly explained why,” the brief explains.
The commission member was Diann Rice.
“I would also like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting,” Rice said. “Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust, whether it be – I mean, we – we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to – to use their religion to hurt others.”
Defending slavery sure is wrong, isn’t it? It’s wrong to force someone to labor for someone for whom he does not wish to labor. And it’s wrong to defend this with fair-sounding ideals — like, I dunno, how about non-discrimination?